Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-16% $16.74$16.74
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$11.76$11.76
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Shakespeare Book House
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Audible sample Sample
The Cloud of Unknowing: With the Book of Privy Counsel Paperback – April 14, 2009
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Purchase options and add-ons
The Cloud of Unknowing consists of a series of letters written by a monk to his student or disciple, instructing him (or her) in the way of Divine union. Its theology is presented in a way that is remarkably easy to understand, as well as practical, providing advice on prayer and contemplation that anyone can use. Previous translations of the Cloud have tended to veil its intimate, even friendly tone under medieval-sounding language. Carmen Butcher has boldly brought the text into language as appealing to modern ears as it was to its original readers more than five hundred years ago.
Also included in the volume is the companion work attributed to the same anonymous author, The Book of Privy Counsel, which contains further advice for approaching God in a way that emphasizes real experience rather than human knowledge.
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherShambhala
- Publication dateApril 14, 2009
- Dimensions5.6 x 0.87 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-101590306228
- ISBN-13978-1590306222
"Layla" by Colleen Hoover for $7.19
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love. | Learn more
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Brilliant, bold, and breathtaking. Carmen Acevedo Butcher is called to this work, and I have no doubt the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing is the one calling her. I loved her sensitivity to the original Middle English, her fascinating background details, and her high level of accuracy. I am delighted that this passionate and readable new translation of the Cloud is on the planet!”—Cynthia Bourgeault, author of The Wisdom Jesus and Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Shambhala; 1st edition (April 14, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1590306228
- ISBN-13 : 978-1590306222
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.6 x 0.87 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #200,483 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #100 in Mysticism Christian Theology
- #233 in Mysticism (Books)
- #5,449 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
On Best Books of 2022 List by Spirituality & Practice, Carmen's translation of Brother Lawrence's Practice of the Presence is the first complete offering of this spiritual classic for a wide-ranging audience. Dr. Martin Laird recommends it as "the new standard by which other translations will be measured." Also the first translated by a woman of color, this accurate translation is the first to use inclusive language and non-binary pronouns for the Divinity, honoring the friar's lived trinitarian theology and inviting all into its kind, loving wisdom. Practice of the Presence is also an Audible book narrated by Joana Garcia.
Winner of a 46th Georgia Author of the Year Award (GAYA), Carmen's translation of The Cloud of Unknowing is praised by Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault for its “spark,” readability, and closeness to the original: "I recommend this book hands down for its sheer immediacy—almost as if ‘Anonymous’ . . . is sitting right there in the room with you—and for its fabulous way of conveying the energy of the medieval original.” Her Cloud of Unknowing is also a 2018 Shambhala Pocket Series book and an Audible book narrated by James Patrick Cronin.
You can hear Carmen on the radio and on podcasts, including on the BBC's The Compass in the series "The Future of English," NPR's Morning Edition, Dante's Old South Radio Show, Things Not Seen, and Georgia Gazette, as well as the Abbey of the Arts Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color, Contemplify, UK's Nomad, Deacons Pod, Encountering Silence, Off the Page by Spirituality & Practice, Messy Jesus Business, Homebrewed, Wisdom's Table, In Search Of, (Re)Thinking Faith, The Church Needs Therapy, and many others.
Carmen teaches in the College Writing Programs at the University of California, Berkeley.
Carmen received a Spotlight Teaching Award at Berkeley, Carnegie Professor of the Year Award for Georgia, and the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship at Shorter College. She was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea, supervising master's theses and teaching graduates and undergraduates for two semesters. At the University of Georgia, Carmen graduated with a Ph.D. Phi Beta Kappa, and she researched medieval and Old English literature.
Carmen studied at the University of London as a Fulbright Scholar for a year and a half, and at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg for a year as a Rotary International Graduate Scholar. She has published numerous books and articles in medieval studies and linguistics with Cambridge University Press, Parabola, Mercer University Press, Cengage Learning, Shambala, Broadleaf Books, Paraclete Press, and others. Carmen leads workshops on contemplation, and she is a frequent speaker at universities, colleges, and community venues, internationally and in the U.S. She and her husband met in London during her first Fulbright grant.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
No one should be afraid to read it. It is clearly written. It does not impeded the Spiritual intent of the author in any way. It augments the reader's experience by the addition of appropriate (optional to read) footnotes as regards the Biblical basis of many statements in the text, the Old English literary technique and "flavors" a strictly modern translation looses, the historical and contemporary references of the author's time and apparent exposure.
This volume in connection with
Fr. Menninger's DVD "Cloud of Unknowing,"
(and Evelyn Underhill's translation for Old English comparison), and
Fr. Timothy Dolan's "To Whom Shall We Go" http://www.amazon.com/To-Whom-Shall-We-Go/dp/1592760503
make an excellent and safe gateway into why one can and should engage a Lay Contemplative journey as part of a balanced Christian existence.
Used in combination, one will not only have sources of instruction, but inspiration and guidance...and guidance is necessary because all powerful spiritual journeys are opposed by ignorance, self-delusion, accidental pratfall, spiritual warfare. Adding a connection to a community of Lay People who engage in Contemplative growth strategies is probably the safest method of all.
This volume would also be quite useful for those who are in pursuit of more secular-type meditation, but are frustrated with Eastern practices.
I think this would be especially so for people who had become distanced from their Judeo-Christian roots while in pursuit of an inner harmony or a state of self-acceptance and a foundation of balance which they sensed ought to be part of their Christian Life--but couldn't find. If I am not mistaken, this volume--written in the local vulgate and not Latin, was "leaked" to the lay community to answer just such a need, and the need remains very real today.
Peace.
I am most humble grateful to the book's author, as well as to the anonymous author of the "Cloud of Unknowing" for his great insight and methods to be truly devoted to God though love, committment and devotion, as all God is, is Love. To love God and all things in His creation is a reflection of the Love that God and is expressed through His creation, including one's "true" self.
Would recommend this book for those of the Christian faith or of other religions for that matter, who definitely want true peeace, joy and love that only God Himself, though His infinite Love and Compassion, can give you.
This is simply a book to help quiet the soul so that God can come in and make a home and the value of his residence makes the soul at peace. Beautiful.
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2021
This is simply a book to help quiet the soul so that God can come in and make a home and the value of his residence makes the soul at peace. Beautiful.